FUSEE Airs Out AMR Policy Debate at AFE Fire Conference

The Association for Fire Ecology’s annual regional conference just concluded. It’s conference on “Fire in the Southwest: Integrating Fire into Management of Changing Ecosystems” brought together over 350 fire scientists, managers, and other interested persons to share the latest research findings and scientific knowledge of wildland fire. Over 125 oral presentations and 60 poster displays were offered, and Leon Neueschwander, emeritus professor from the University of Idaho’s excellent fire science program, was presented with AFE’s lifetime achievement award.

FUSEE members were out in force at the conference. We had our poster display and literature table strategically placed next to the bar where we recruited several new members and made lots of great new contacts. FUSEE’s executive director, Dr. Timothy Ingalsbee, gave an oral presentation on the concept of Appropriate Management Response. His talk was titled, “Begging the Question: Appropriate Management Response as a Toolbox vs. Tautology: Integrating Safety, Ethical, and Ecological Sideboards into AMR.”

Here is the abstract for his talk:

The Appropriate Management Response (AMR) to wildland fires is a core concept integral to implementing the Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy. AMR expands the strategic and tactical options for fire managers so they can choose from a full spectrum of potential actions--everything from aerial monitoring to aggressive suppression can be used to manage wildland fires. Moreover, all of these tactics can be combined on the same incident, and can change according to the time, place, and conditions of a fire. In short, any action taken on a wildland fire could be AMR.

The AMR concept provides managers with maximum flexibility and discretion, offering new opportunities to improve firefighter safety, control costs, and reduce the environmental impacts of traditional wildfire suppression responses. However, AMR as currently articulated suffers from a kind of circular reasoning: the AMR is any response that managers deem appropriate. As such, AMR could make tactical decision-making more complex for managers, and their actions less accountable to the public.

Much confusion about AMR currently exists within the fire management community: Is it an alternative, “kinder, gentler” form of fire suppression? Does it include or will it eliminate Wildland Fire Use? Does it require revising Forest Plans and Fire Management Plans? Is there no such a thing as an inappropriate management response? This paper will wade through some of the conceptual confusion over AMR, and advocate the need for rigorous pre-planning and predetermined “sideboards” to help ensure appropriately safe, ethical, ecological responses to wildland fire.

Immediately following his formal presentation a gap in the speaker schedule allowed a free-flowing 20 minute discussion among members of the audience. From this fascinating discussion, it seems clear that AMR policy is partly being driven from the “top-down” by progressive policymakers working primarily at the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), and partly from the “bottom-up” by progressive managers working in regions like the Northern Rockies who have been applying innovative tactics in the field to manage the recent “megafires.” In the huge void between the progressive policymakers at the top and the managers in the field, there is plenty of confusion over the concept of AMR—not helped by contradictory and occasionally incorrect language about AMR coming from the Washington Office of the U.S. Forest Service.

Among many fascinating discussions we had with folks in the hallways at the AFE conference, we learned from informed sources that the AMR policy is going to be finalized and approved in a matter of weeks so that it is in place for the coming wildfire season in the West. We had originally believed that the policy would not come on-line until next year, after the next Administration has taken office, and after the integrated Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS) was in place.

Follow-up discussions with members of the AMR Task Group (a small group of folks working on the AMR policy—more on that later!) confirmed that the policy will be put in place very soon. Then, everything from the documentation forms (e.g. the ICS-209s) to agency Handbooks and Manuals to firefighter training curriculum will undergo changes to reflect the new policy. Some policies will be approved within the next few months (e.g. all wildland fires will receive the Appropriate Management Response), while other policies will be rolled out over the next three years (e.g. managing human-caused fires for resource benefits).

It seems clear that the new AMR policy will certainly be approved, although until the last day that the Bush Administration is in office one can never be clear or certain about much. The new AMR policy has the potential to revolutionize the way we think about and manage wildland fire—just as the letter and spirit of the Federal Wildland Fire Policy envisioned. The Bush Administration’s Orwellian “Implementation Strategy” in 2003 functioned as another Presidential “signing statement” that negated implementation of the Federal Wildland Fire Policy, and neutered the Fire Policy’s concept of AMR. This raises the question, why the sudden turnaround in the Administration’s attitude toward AMR?

From our best guess, it seems that the Bush Administration is supportive of the AMR concept because it conforms to their notion of the “Unitary Executive” whereby top officials can do just about any damn thing they want without any legal constraint, public disclosure, or public accountability. Indeed, managers in the field will have immense discretionary power, courtesy of the new AMR policy, to do great good or great harm to the land in the operational strategies and tactics they choose to make. Once the AMR policy is finalized on paper, the struggle will just begin over how it will be applied on-the-ground, and that is going to require a massive cultural change not only within the fire management community, but in society at large.

After much debate and ongoing discussion within FUSEE, we have decided to weigh in and support the emerging AMR policy based on our hopes rather than fears. We are confident that, at least among our members working in the field, they will be able to do great things managing fire to protect communities and restore ecosystems, and reduce the risks, costs, and impacts of traditional suppression actions. But the coming changes with AMR policy must be discussed and debated among the whole fire management community—as soon as possible. In order to foster this wider discussion and debate, FUSEE is creating a new category in the “Current Issues” section of our website where we will post documents and essays on AMR. Feel free to send us responses, documents, information, and your own personal stories to info@fusee.org

Our biggest impression from talking with folks at the AFE conference is that the “Change” mandate that is driving all the Presidential campaigns from both parties is also inspiring federal fire management workers. After seven long years of the Bush Administration’s regressive policies, suppression of scientists, and utter contempt for the federal workforce, you could feel a new hope rippling through the folks at the AFE conference. We're going to need some hope dealing with all the immense challenges facing fire managers as climate change, urban sprawl, invasive weeds, shrinking budgets and workforce combine to set conditions for the "perfect firestorm" in the years ahead.

--FUSEE

Reflections on the SoCal Fire Siege of '07

by Mike

Prologue

In late October of this year, the Santa Anna winds began to howl through the mountain passes around San Diego, and along with the wind came the long-predicted wildfires. I try to resist calling it a “natural disaster.” Since the wildfires were the work of arsonists, snapped power lines, and the archetypical child playing with matches, the fires were hardly natural. And without the unwise housing development and overpopulation down there, the fires would not have been a disaster.

My story is not one of the half-million refugees who hastily packed (if they were lucky), fled their homes, and stayed in the unfamiliar environments of distant friends and family, the Oceanside Wal-Mart parking lot, or evacuation centers like Qualcom Stadium. My story is only one out of the ten thousand firefighters who were mobilized for this epic event. Though many brothers and sisters in the Fire Service were genuine heroes in those initial hectic days before the wind subsided, I was not a "hero." But my experience as a wildland firefighter on the SoCal Fire Siege of '07 did rekindle in me a sense of duty and honor to serve, and for that reason it is worth telling.

To begin this story in the proper context, I have to go back to the beginning of this fire season. Once again, in what seems to be happening with greater frequency, a drought in Southern California at the beginning of the summer marched relentlessly northward up into the Northern Rockies where over 3 million acres burned in Idaho this season, more than during the Big Blowup of 1910. Earlier this spring, a half million acres burned in a “fifty-year event” in the Southeast, with the Okeefenokee Swamp as its epicenter. Atlanta’s water supply remains threatened by continuing drought in that region, and large wildfires have ignited again in the Southeast.

The Southern Sierra was also showing record low fuel moistures early in the season, and parallels with past catastrophic fire seasons were frequent fare for shop talk among fire crews. Early in the season, large fires like the Angora Fire near Lake Tahoe showed alarming fire behavior. Managers were so wound uptight that an excellent candidate for wildland fire use was suppressed after it grew to three hundred acres in early September, based on fear that the fire would grow to thousands of acres before its season-ending event.

By October, Yosemite had received two to three shots of precipitation of less than one inch each, and the days had shortened. The aspen trees were showing their fall colors as firefighters completed a prescribed fire project of nearly 900 acres adjacent to the community of Yosemite West. As usual, complaints were received about the smoke, especially one day when some smoke moved towards the polluted San Joaquin Valley. Though we have the same objective of improving community fire protection as those firefighters putting out wildfires, our prescribed fire lighters get far less praise and much more nuisance complaints about smoke and negative reactions by those whose sense of aesthetics is offended by black trees. Air quality managers were urging us to end our prescribed fire quickly as they feared the east winds forecasted for southern California would blow Yosemite’s residual smoke down into the San Joaquin Valley. Fortunately, the prescribed burn was finished on a Friday and placed in patrol status. The Santa Ana winds began to blow in San Diego the very next day.

Caption: Aspen showing fall colors in Elevenmile Meadow in Yosemite National Park after prescribed fire is completed.



















The Firestorm

Resource orders began to stream into Yosemite’s dispatch center as fires burned wildly out of control around the San Diego area. It looked like 2003 all over again. Overall, Yosemite would send over forty firefighters out individually in overhead assignments, as part of a twenty-person handcrew, and to staff the Park’s helicopter, fire engine, and even the Park dozer. I waited until all the other Park crews had been assigned before I took a Division Group Supervisor assignment on the Rice Canyon Fire. I didn’t leave until Wednesday morning, after the winds had subsided and things began to move towards mop-up and overhaul. Yosemite did have another Division Group Supervisor who spent a hectic night on a twelve mile long division where homes were lost in the howling wind. That experience should prove very valuable as the inexorable march of new housing development into flammable wildlands continues throughout the Sierras. I heard another story about the wind being so fierce that it was hard to open one’s vehicle door, then upon opening it, embers would come flying in and ignite any important papers that might be lying around, like shift plans, fire maps, etc. Scary stuff, to be sure!

My first eerie experience was driving into the completely deserted town of Fallbrook, California. This is a mid-sized bedroom community on the eastern edge of Camp Pendelton. It was odd seeing an American city empty except for firefighters, police, and Marines patrolling in Humvees. As I began to get oriented to the area I was assigned, I was shocked that many folks in the area seemed to have more money than common sense, with homes built on knobs and in draws that just defied logic. How one could live in such a place, and not expect to have it reduced to ashes is beyond me!


Caption: This homesite in the foreground and the homesite on the knoll in the background were located in a natural pathway for wildfire and were totally destroyed by the flames.

I was also shocked at the amount of damage to the avocado crop. Unlike the citrus plantations, the avocado groves were not very effective as fuel breaks because there were many places where deep, dry avocado litter carried the fire well under the extremely windy conditions. The 60 to 80 mph Santa Ana winds blew all of the ripe avocados to the ground where they were ground into guacamole by fire truck tires. It was very sad to see so much wasted produce!

Also, my Division was a favorite spot for press photo opportunities, especially the Valley Oaks mobile home park. The tightly packed mobile homes were too close together, and over a hundred mobile homes—over half of all the homes in the trailer park--were completely destroyed by fire. A week after the fires began Governor Arnold Schwarzeneger showed up at the trailer park for a photo op. This was after most of the mainstream newsmedia coverage had initially focused on the burned mansions of Malibu.


Caption: A fire engine watches over destroyed mobile homes in the Valley Oaks trailer park.

Throughout my firefighting experience in SoCal, I was consistently struck by the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Most of the Valley Oaks residents probably didn’t have insurance and had few places to go, unlike the residents of muti-million dollar homes. The mansions will likely be rebuilt in the same spots, setting up the same split-second life-or-death decision for firefighters again, attempting to protect those structures for a future wildfire. Wealth certainly provides more options, like the utilization of proper fire-resistant homebuilding materials. Many homes built with stucco roofs and other less flammable components had fire race right up to and around the home with little impact.

Caption: This home built with fireproof construction materials survived the wildfire.

In Idaho this year we also saw for the first time what wealth can bring in the way of a high-end home insurance policy. I saw firsthand a piece of equipment, probably a truck with a compressed air foam system (CAFS) or some other gel-like application apparatus, roaming the streets of Fallbrook tending to their rich clients home. Like Blackwater in the military area, these resources are not linked in any way to the ongoing suppression operation’s organization, and probably have no way to communicate on the incident’s radio frequencies. Nonetheless, they are there, free to roam at will beyond the barricades that bar all others including local residents and journalists, looking out for their clients’ investments.

In another case of class inequity in feeling the fires’ heat, one can turn to the Witch Fire that devastated a Native American community around Rincon, California. As the Santa Anna winds swept the fire down off the hill, it was fueled by the junk and debris scattered between the poorly-built and highly flammable dwellings north and east of the sprawling Harrah’s casino. I’m not sure if the casino missed a spin of the wheel or roll of the dice for even one day while the wildfire was causing mayhem all around it. It must have been quite a sight up on the top floor of the casino sipping cocktails while watching the fire burn it’s way through the squalor below.

I did notice that the camp for many of the utility company trucks was located right next to the casino. Camp for the firefighters was prudently located much farther away, although I did notice some overhead from the CalFire team were staying at the hotel. I’m sure that since they were being paid 24 hours per day they did not partake in any gambling opportunities! The utility repair folks moved quickly back into the evacuated burned-over areas, patching powerlines and getting their product flowing again into consumers’ homes.

I listened intently to the morning talk show radio, and it was interesting to sort through the self-congratulatory tone of the politicians and fire chiefs, in contrast to the anger and frustration of those who could not get back through the barricades to assess their losses. I felt sorry for the cops at the roadblocks. They were harassed mercilessly. On thing I did pick up on was the unwillingness of the newsmedia to follow the money trail. It seems a foregone conclusion on sun- and money-drenched sunny Southern California that politicians will act in collusion with the developers, homebuilders, road-builders, and utility companies to continue putting homes and people in the pathway of wildfire. No looking back, is the motto. I seldom heard anyone spending much time blaming those that created this mess of humanity at the doorstep of one of the country’s most fire-prone landscapes.

Occasionally, you would hear a call for better zoning, but this was usually squelched in a land known for the loathing of taxes and regulatory restrictions. In fact, a bond had recently been voted down that would have increased firefighting staff in San Diego County. Now, of course, an increase in suppression resources will be the likely outcome of this event. The preferred solution to most folks living next to Camp Pendleton was “shock and awe.” Unlike Idaho’s experiment this summer with point protection, it looks like Southern California will maintain and reinforce its “fire as enemy” mentality, foolishly believing that with enough “heavy metal” aircraft, engines, firefighters, and equipment, the wildfire “beast” can be brought to its knees. That was the refrain heard on local talk radio time and again, rather than the need for more thoughtful housing development.

Caption: a fleet of "heavy metal" staged on the Poomacha Fire.

The remainder of my assignment was spent as a Field Observer on the Poomacha Fire atop Palomar Mountain. As the eyes and consul to another Division Group Supervisor, with no firefighters working directly beneath me, this couldn’t have been a better assignment. There I met up with a strike team of structural engines from Los Angeles and a mixed squad of engines and firefighters from the Prescott National Forest who had teamed up in the early days of this blaze to protect many homes on top of Palomar Mountain, and conducted a successful burnout around a church camp. There, with a small organization, two fire cultures worked together with their respective expertise to do the unheralded and unimaginable. Both groups will have many stories to tell their children.

At one point I was able to make it over to the Palomar Observatory, where somebody in their hasty evacuation had left the door wide open on their way out. I was able to roam around the interior of this fabled place along with some other firefighters while a bored contingent of Marine Engineers was cutting dozer line around the nicely-manicured grounds around the observatory. I wondered how much environmental compliance that would normally have required and if it was really necessary since the fire was five miles away and going out quickly.

Eventually, even the Poomacha Fire began to wind down. The pressure was on the CalFire team to get the fire contained before a Forest Service team was slated to take over at the end of the weekend, a date I had hoped would end my personal contribution to the SoCal Siege of ’07. However, my respite at the church camp atop Palomar Mountain was jarred for my last two days on the fire. Always eager to be of help, I kept making my way to the last open, unlined section of the fire. As it turned out, hotshot crews had refused to go cut fireline into some of these areas, much of which was inside a tiny wilderness area on the San Bernardino National Forest. Unwilling to be patient and watch as fuels burned down in a northeast-facing canyon with lot of unburned fuels and scabby burn, the last effort before I left was to saturate the area with inmate crews. Over a dozen strike teams were flown in on my last shift, digging line around innumerable fire fingers in sketchy steep terrain, all to put a black “Line Completed” mark on a map.

With the Poomacha Fire being one of the last few fires still uncontained, I can believe that the political pressure on fire managers to wrap it up must have been intense. None of that really justifies the unnecessary resource damage to wilderness, though. I was stunned the day before when an unnamed Branch Chief, for whom I was working, kicked a Type II mixed federal/contract crew off of the fire because, for safety’s sake, they demanded to scout the fire area more thoroughly, before sending in their crews. Inmate crews had been unable to get to this site before because their crew carriers could not get up the rough roads. The Branch Chief simply ordered helispots be built immediately adjacent to wilderness so that a massive helicopter troop shuttle could be orchestrated to bring in these crews, with no turn-down protocol. Fortunately, all of the many dozen flights went off safely as planned.

Caption: Looking south from the Poomacha Fire towards the Witch Fire.

All of this gives a policy wonk quite a bit to chew on with its stark contrasts to the shift in suppression strategy that occurred in the Northern Rockies this year (In a curious side note, a couple of subdivisions marketed as ‘shelter-in-place’ communities in the San Diego area, with strict building and fuel reduction codes, emerged largely unscathed from fires burning around them). An overwhelming response of firefighters and “heavy metal” remain the preferred strategy in SoCal. It is impractical to believe that much prescribed burning will ever be conducted near such a dense population center, and apparently housing development can’t or won’t be restricted, so be prepared for more mayhem in this part of the country.

I’m glad that our prescribed fire crews were able to get down to SoCal and help out. They deserve some of the same gushing appreciation for firefighters displayed in all the home-made banners and home-cooked cupcakes that were delivered to the Incident Command Posts. In the real world, the job of making communities fire-safe remains a job of proactively planning and prescribing fires to protect communities from wildfires remains a largely unseen and unheralded job without much outpouring of public support.

Given the insane housing development that is already planning to rebuild homes atop charred foundations and locate new homes in the very footprint of the recent wildfires, I'm sure that this prescribed burner will soon get another chance at firefighting heroics on the next SoCal conflagration.

--Mike

The Australians have a good idea for wildfire protection

One thing I want to relay to the people of Yellow Pine is that fire fighters will never question the worth of a small community like Yellow Pine when push comes to shove and there is a need to protect it from wildfire. The safety of people is always the first priority for fire fighting efforts. That is built in the analysis every fire team must go through during all fire suppression and fire use efforts. While helping to manage a fire hundreds of miles away from my home, I, too, have felt what it is like to know that a fire was threatening my community (population 1100) and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do but relay to friends where my most treasured possessions were so they could evacuate.

What I feel concerned about and I think the residents of Yellow Pine and every other small community in this country should be concerned about is an issue reported in a recent article in the Idaho Statesman that talked about crews hired by private insurance companies to protect the homes of the rich. I think we must be vigilant to make sure that the push that I have seen in the last ten years to privatize government services does not translate into fire protection only for those with the deepest pockets.

The best answer is for communities like Yellow Pine all over the country to take their fire protection into their own hands by continuing to FIREWISE their communities. I spent a month in Australia last winter, helping Australian fire teams fight their fires. Their sense of community around the fire issue is incredible—they have well developed systems to help everyone and their property survive a wildfire. They are now the canaries in the coal mine because global climate change is hitting them in their already drought stricken country very hard. The huge and numerous fires they are experiencing are what we have to look forward to in America—and are already experiencing this summer.

The Australians have a viable system that shares equal responsibility for fire protection between the government and the communities. Many of the firefighters in the communities are volunteers. They have dozens of small, mobile fire trucks that anyone with an hour of training can operate. Homeowners collect water from metal roofs in holding tanks and keep water sources on their property to fight fires. They can quote to the millileter, how much rainfall will yield in their storage tanks from each storm. They have highly organized phone trees so that neighbors can keep track of neighbors during an emergency.

The Australian government encourages people to either make the decision early in a wildfire situation to leave their home or stay and fight (something I applaud the people in Yellow Pine for doing, despite the government’s evacuation orders, according to another Idaho Statesman article). But the Australian method is very calculated—they are not just making a heroic “last stand at the Alamo”—they have prepared their properties to withstand the onslaught of fire through thinning and good building practices and have viable plans for protecting their properties that they have developed before the inevitable fire approaches. The Australians call it “Sheltering in Place”. If you are interested--check out their website : http://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/residents/living/litb-workbook.htm.


The truth behind protecting people and communities from wildfire damage is complex—it requires a partnership between the communities and agencies responsible for fire management months before the inevitable fire strikes and firefighters respond. Why can’t we harness our strong sense of independence as Americans and rise to this challenge?

--Fireweed

Where the Heck is Yellowpine - Part II

In Part I of this dispatch, I asked "Where The Heck Is Yellowpine, and why am I risking my ass to save it?" Since I wrote that post, we have had a busy few weeks in the wildlands of Idaho.

By now, many of you have heard about or seen video of an incident on August 13th during which the Knox Ranch Incident Command Post (ICP or 'firecamp') on the Cascade Complex - in Central Idaho - was burned into by a wildfire. Backfires set to protect the camp from the fire's advance spotted across the road between the fires and the camp, and despite heavy helicopter work for much of the afternoon, at about 4:30 p.m., the fire burned up to the edge of the camp, melted some porta-potties, burned a yurt, destroyed several historic cabins, and ignited a dumpster in the middle of camp. Nobody in camp was seriously injured, and many non line-qualified personnel got a chance to experience group torching in lodgepole and subalpine fir up close and personal. An old Alaska Smokejumper friend who knows a thing or two about crown fire said simply "It was fu*#ing hot!"

Video of fire burning into Cascade Complex ICP by Alex Park.

After a few days off, many of us turned on the computer, caught up on some email, and browsed to the "Theysaid" blog on wildlandfire.com - the unofficial gossip column of American wildland fire. Here, the debate about the incident has centered mainly on language: Was this incident an "entrapment," a "burnover," or "close-call"? The USFS has coined a new phrase for such an event, they are calling it, a “burn-by.” None of these terms are casual - all have specific definitions and are usually associated with investigations, finger-pointing, and maybe a bit of new policy, e.g. "Though shalt not burn up thy firecamp."

Some have minimized the incident, pointing out that the camp (a mountain meadow) was essentially a large safety zone in which the camp's occupants were able to weather the firestorm without fire-shelters.

Much of the discussion about the ICP fire seems to blame Incident Commander Paul Broyles (in charge of the Cascade Complex when the incident occurred) for letting fire burn into his camp. This oversimplifies the case. Paul Broyles was the third IC to work out of the Knox Ranch ICP, and as the fire approached his camp, his Team had barely gotten their feet on the ground on an assignment with a myriad of political, tactical, and leadership challenges. None of the posts that I have read so far have talked about the bigger picture of the Incident - operations controlled by the Knox Ranch ICP were only one part of a huge operation involving several large fire complexes, hundreds of square miles of uncontrolled fire, thousands of firefighters, and hundreds of overhead personnel.

I have been working on the Cascade Complex for most of the time that it has been burning, and was in the ICP up until about 4 days before it burned. I think that the events leading up to the Incident are worth sharing because they raise wider issues that need to be discussed by the wildland fire community. The ICP burn didn't unfold overnight - like most wildfire accidents, this one was the result of a series of multiple oversights and miscommunications, and occurred during a major transition, which is a common cause of firefighter accidents. While the story below is mine, most of us who were involved think that the ICP fire merits further discussion, and begs larger questions regarding Federal Fire Policy in general.

Some Key Questions:

• What direction was the Area Command Team providing the IMTs as the IMTs defined objectives for their respective fires?

• At what point did the IMTs receive the direction to shift priorities from 'perimeter-control' to 'point-protection.'?

• What were the dynamics between the IMTs working on the Cascade vs. East Zone Complexes?

• Did having an Area Command Team overseeing operations help or hinder communication between the Incident Management Teams that they were charged to support?

• At an early juncture, it was clear that the Central Idaho Fires were beyond control. Why did it take over a month for the fire organization to officially change their tactics to emphasize 'point-protection'?

The Central Idaho Fires of 2007.

Maps of Cascade Complex Fires from Inciweb

The Cascade Complex was born out of a large lightning storm that swept fire ignitions across large portions of the Boise, Payette, and Salmon-Challis National Forests of Central Idaho on July 17, 2007. This storm started the fires that would become the 'East Zone,' 'Cascade,' 'Middle Fork,' and 'Krassel WFU (Wildland Fire Use)' Complexes. Each of these complexes has required their own Overhead Teams, and to date, have cost taxpayers over $85 million.

When Tom Suwyn's Central Utah Type II Team arrived at Knox Ranch on July 20th to manage the Cascade Complex fires, 5 fires were burning across about 650 acres - of steep, thicketed, backcountry land. Even though these fires had plenty of potential for growth, the Cascade Complex was 15th in priority for resources in the Eastern Great Basin Area. Other fires competing for resources in the region included the Murphy's Complex, which started on 7/16/2007 near Twin Falls and had burnt over 500,000 acres by 7/21. By July 26th, 1,420 personnel were assigned to the Murphy’s Complex alone.

By the 22nd, the incoming Team had three Type II crews to work with and no engines, and the fires had grown to over 8,000 acres. This is not an uncommon occurrence - most large fires get started when other large fires in a region draw down firefighting resources. The incoming Team did what they could with the resources they had on hand; they set up a firecamp, ordered 11 hotshot crews, 6 helicopters, and 25 engines, and focused on their mission "do what we can with what we've got, don't get anybody hurt".

Originally, the Cascade Complex was made up of 3 fires on the Northern End of the Boise National Forest - the 'Monumental,', 'Riordan,', and 'Whiskey' Fires. In Tom Suwyn's Team's short tenure, new lightning starts established the 'Sandy' and 'Yellow' Fires, and Suwyn's Team was able to successfully contain the 'Whiskey' Fire. Smoking on the backside of a ridge West of the Knox Ranch ICP was the North Fork Fire. This fire was one of the closest to firecamp, but it had started on the Payette National Forest, and operations on it were being run out of the East Zone Complex ICP in McCall - about 55 miles away. This created a disconnect where the intel (mapping, planning, and analysis of fire behavior) on the North Fork Fire was basically unavailable to the Overhead at Knox Ranch - even though they were camped only 4-5 miles from the fire.

Around July 22nd, Rocky Oplinger's California Type I Team arrived on at Knox Ranch and Tom Suwyn's Team went home. Simultaneously, Jeanne Pincha-Tully's California Type I Team arrived in McCall to take over the East Zone Complex. With the arrival of the Type I Teams, resources poured in from across the West. By 7/26 the Cascade Complex had 2 Type I helicopters and 17 engines assigned, but it was too late. August brought hot dry days and high winds, and within a few days, the fires on all of the Central Idaho Complexes blew up. On August 1st, the Monumental Fire covered over 7 square miles, the North Fork Fire was at 1,582 acres, and the week-old Sandy Fire had already blown up to over 10,000 acres. By August 4th, the Monumental Fire covered 12 square miles, the North Fork Fire had grown to 4,186 acres.

As early as August 1st, both Oplinger's and Pincha-Tully's Teams had taken note of the potential threat that the North Fork Fire posed to the Cascade Complex ICP. A Draft camp evacuation plan was developed for the ICP, and firecamp contractors with shower and catering trailers were being asked to consider mobilizing drivers in case the camp needed to be moved. The general feeling at this time, though, was that prevailing winds would carry the North Fork fire to the Northeast, bypassing the ICP. As days went by and the North Fork Fire began to blow up, Rocky Oplinger's Team sent a field observer over to take a look at what was happening there. Pincha-Tully's Team took offense at this action, feeling that their toes were being stepped on. Heated phone calls between the ICs may or may not have improved communication between these two Teams.

Cascade ICP - 8-7-2007

By the end of Oplinger's Team's two-week assignment on the Cascade Complex (8/8), the fires had burned over 69,000 acres, and the Area Command Team in Cascade made the decision to add the North Fork Fire (now over 7,000 acres) to the Cascade Complex, and to split the two Easternmost fires in the complex (Sandy and Riordan) into their own Complex - the Landmark Complex, which was to be managed by Tom Suwyn's Type II Team.

Splitting the Cascade Complex in two pieces meant that Paul Broyle's Incoming Type I Team had to inbrief with two separate outgoing Teams, and also had to coordinate with Tom Suwyn's Team to reassign/split resources from two Complexes into three. It goes without saying that this period of time (8/5 thru 8/8) redefined the term clusterf*&k -- at a time when the fires continued to blow up daily. Also, Joe Ribar's Area Command Team transitioned with James Loach's Team between 8/7 and 8/9. As the IMT transition finished its third day, the North Fork Fire crested the last ridge between it and the Knox Ranch ICP, and the biggest mob of blue-polo-shirted Overhead folks ever seen by this firefighter faced a wild sunset: a smoked-salmon disk sliding across ridgeline sillhouettes of torching Subalpine Fir.

Regardless of whether anyone in the Knox Ranch ICP got hurt in the fire, many people were placed in harm's way fighting fires that we all knew were going to burn "until the snows fly." While the North Fork Fire was threatening the Knox Ranch, Tom Suwyn's Type II Team was forced to relocate their Landmark Complex ICP twice within a week, as first the Monumental, and then the North Fork Fires threatened their camps. Both of these moves involved hundreds of people and long convoys of support vehicles (crew buses, porta-potties, personal rigs, clerical, catering, and shower trailers) moving across over 20 miles of washboarded, narrow, dust-spewing backcountry dirt road.

Crashed garbage truck burned by wildfire.

When Suwyn's Team moved out of their second camp -- at Cox Ranch, in the Johnson Creek drainage -- the convoy drove over Warm Lake Summit thru an area that had experienced thousands of acres of crown fire the day before, had not yet been 'snagged' (hazard trees felled), and was still actively burning. At this point, this was the only road leading out of the area -- the other egress had been closed by the Loon/Zena Fire's advance. The day before this second move, a skateboard-sized piece of bark launched by explosive growth on the North Fork Fire (over ten miles upwind) fell from the sky onto the firecamp! Smoke from this blowup drifted across the entire continent, and out over the Atlantic Ocean.

Smoke from Central Idaho Fires on 8/12/07

Map of Monumental and North Fork Fires - the Convoy passed right thru the middle of these two fires.

So, "Where The Heck Is Yellowpine, and why am I risking my ass to save it?"

The first "Yellowpine" post asked why were we fighting backcountry fires that were clearly beyond human control. That post leads directly to this one: if it were not for the presence of a few cabins (one owned by a Senator), or private ranches in this area, it would likely be "Fire Use" ground -- where lightning fires are allowed to burn naturally as they have done so since the dawn of time. Hundreds of firefighters and support personnel were placed out in front of wildfires that were running as much as seven miles a day in order to do some politically-motivated structure protection, and to try to hold onto the heel of huge fires that were heading for the wilderness. Idaho's Salmon River Watershed is Fire Country. The land needs fire, and any fires that we suppress there only delay the next big one -- and everyone knows this.

I applaud the decision to quit trying to contain and attempt perimeter control of these fires, and to concentrate instead on 'point-protection' of a few historic cabins, old guard stations, or pack-bridges. My biggest hope is that we can learn to make these sorts of calls earlier in the game -- not after the fires have kicked our asses around the woods for five weeks. Why did it take so long for the order to come to disengage from 'confine and control' tactics?

The firefighters on the Cascade Complex have had excellent leadership in their camps, but have been let down by those at higher levels. Jerking hundreds of people around (including Overhead, camp crews, cooks, and garbage haulers) in front of running crownfires is unacceptable. Wildland firefighters deserve a clearer mission.

- fire hobo

New Strategy for Suppression Siege in Idaho's Fire Country

The East Zone Fire Complex, Cascade Fire Complex, and other large wildfires in Idaho continue to grow unabated despite the efforts of thousands of wildland firefighters and millions of dollars in attempted suppression. These fires are burning in Idaho’s Fire Country: steep, rugged mountainous terrain thick with fire-dependent vegetation where wildland fire rightfully plays its natural role as the “keystone” ecosystem process. In an implicit statement of humility in the face of an awesome display of Nature’s power, fire managers have created a new strategy that essentially ends the long siege in the forests, and wisely implements protective actions at selective sites where human structures and infrastructure are threatened.

The Idaho Fires are becoming a landscape-scale phenomenon, with the rate, intensity, and scale of fire spread apparently taking fire managers by surprise. A case in point: the Incident Command Post (i.e. “Fire Camp”) for the Cascade Fire Complex was entrapped and nearly burned over last week. Instead of relocating fire camp--a time-consuming and expensive operation to move a convoy of vehicles and reconstruct a mini-city in a new location, not without its own hazards driving in smoky conditions--fire managers opted for a “stay in place” strategy. Their decision was finalized when the wildfire burned across all roads leading out of the Fire Camp and cut off all escape routes.

Firefighters rigged up sprinklers on the perimeter of the meadow that served as Fire Camp. Non-firefighting camp support personnel were herded to the center of the meadow where they huddled together with their backs to the smoke and flames. Helicopters dumped water on the headfire as it hit the perimeter of the meadow, but the fire sent waves of ember-filled smoke into Fire Camp, sparking over a hundred spotfires. Folks scrambled to stomp out the spotfires as best they could, nevertheless, a yurt, some tents, portapotties, and an historic cabin were all ignited and destroyed by flames.

The stay-in-place strategy worked in that no one was immediately injured by the wildfire and suppression operations continued on the rest of the fire despite the drama in fire camp, and given the circumstances this probably was the best option in terms of firefighter safety. However, a more questionable call was the decision by fire managers to remain in the burned site surrounded by charred, smoking trees, with a thousand-foot smoke layer hovering above it during every morning’s air inversion. The result: smoke inhalation has sickened most camp personnel with various forms of bronchitis, and a pall of depression has affected morale in the camp. Forest Service officials are spinning the incident by calling it a "burn-by" instead of a burnover, but it still was an entrapment by any other name.

From a cursory look at fire maps it looks like several fires, especially the East Zone Complex and Rattlesnake Fires, will soon merge together, perhaps eventually merging with the Cascade Complex. Comparing the perimeters of current fires and old fires that burned in the area over the last six years (these maps are available on the GeoMac website), today’s Idaho Fires are simply filling in the unburned gaps between these past fires. In most cases, the old burns are serving as the boundaries to check the spread and confine the new fires, but in some cases even these old wildfire areas are reburning. So, the Idaho Fires are doing exactly what Mother Nature intended to happen, burning the areas that could have, would have, should have burned before had we not foolishly attempted to exclude and suppress wildland fires burning in Idaho’s Fire Country.

Upwards of $50 million have been spent attempting to suppress the Idaho Fires, most of it in futility. Firefighters were able to secure the heel of fires, tinker around and burn out the flanks, and keep well out of the way of the headfires, but these fires continually spot over firelines and spread unabated. Recognizing that mortal human beings are not able to stop the spread of these large wildfires given the weather, fuel, and terrain conditions, fire managers are no longer attempting initial attack on new fires ignited in the land between the existing large fires. The thinking is that initial attack efforts will be unsuccessful and extremely unsafe given prevailing weather conditions, but even if firefighters were able to contain the new fires, these would eventually be engulfed and absorbed into the growing perimeters of the large fires. Fire managers are thus wisely opting not to attack new fire starts in the “free fire zones” between the existing large fires.

Fire managers have now prepared a “Super WFSA” (Wildland Fire Situation Analysis, pronounced “woof-suh”). The WFSA is the guiding strategic plan for fighting wildfires, and normally every single large wildfire gets its own WFSA, but these are not “normal” times. The new Super WFSA creates a single, uniform strategy for managing all of the wildfires on the Boise, Payette, and Salmon-Challis National Forests. This makes sense, since these fires are bound to merge together by the end of this fire season if the weather conditions do not change.

This new plan will cease most attempts to assert “perimeter control” (the attempt to completely encircle a wildfire with a fire containment line), and instead, shifts to a strategy of “point protection” (placing firefighters and equipment at specific sites, such as rural communities, where suppression actions are both necessary and more likely to succeed). As the experience with the Cascade Complex Fire Camp entrapment demonstrated, firefighters are able to focus their efforts and successfully protect a specific place--even from a raging headfire--while letting the wildfire burn around them and keep moving on unabated.

According to the WFSA, fire managers estimate that the eventual size of the Idaho Fires will reach 2,000,000 acres, and under a worst-case weather scenario could grow as large as 5,000,000 acres. The total costs of “suppressing” these fires will be a minimum of $120,000,000 and could be as high as $205,000,000, making this the most expensive wildfire suppression incident in world history! What exactly American taxpayers will get from that huge expense of money is hard to say.

Many of the large fires are burning towards the the Frank Church/River of No Return Wilderness Area that could use some fire for ecological benefits, which makes the new strategy of point protection both economically and ecologically rational since there’s not too many places in the wilderness that need protection from wildland fire. Instead, firefighters will be staged at the few isolated cabins, historic sites, and small rural communities that inhabit this remote region. Firefighters will be covering cabins with shelter-wrap (a kind of tin-foil blanket that resists flames), coating power poles with flame retardant gel, pruning and thinning brush around structures, and other simple but effective protective actions to prevent human-built structures from igniting.

Given the kind of extreme fire behavior that has been happening to date, and the fact that many rural communities in Idaho are sorely unprepared for wildfires and most homes have no defensible space, these new firefighting assignments will still be challenging, to put it mildly. Apparently, most protective actions will be applied to government-owned properties only. It is not clear yet what kinds of actions will be applied to private properties.

Rural Idaho contains small communities and isolated homes of both poor folk and the ultra rich. Defending communities is one thing, but assignments to protect upscale trophy cabins and hobby ranches are not what most wildland firefighters imagined they would be doing when they enlisted. These properties are the vacation and retirement homes largely owned by corporate elites who make more money in a single day's worth of their Bush tax cuts than the typical ground-pounding firefighter makes in a whole season of hard labor. Firefighters will need to keep wildfire from igniting these isolated properties of Idaho's rural rich and poor because when that stuff burns it’s bound to be a toxic smoke that fills the air.

Its stereotypical but true: many rural Idaho residents are rightwing anti-environmentalist/anti-government types who would much rather be left alone—until a wildfire ignites and then they expect Uncle Sam’s firefighting army to come to their rescue. Some firefighters are starting to question why they are risking their health and safety for the likes of people who may scribble “Thank You Firefighters” on a piece of cardboard but do little to defend their own properties or make firefighters’ jobs easier, and in many cases, make their jobs much more dangerous.

Idaho’s Fire Country is a natural location for implementing Wildland Fire Use, a safer, cheaper, more environmentally sound way to manage wildland fires burning in remote regions with fire-adapted ecosystems. This is not the same thing as "Let Burn," but instead, firefighters can apply management actions that can steer fires into areas that need fire for ecological benefits, while slowing and stopping the fires from spreading into vulnerable human communities. Managing wildland fires is much safer and smarter and more successful than making "war" on wildfire. So far, no one has been killed on the Idaho Fires, but there are thousands of firefighters toiling away under similar conditions on other fires all over the West. This begs the question: why we are putting people in danger to fight Nature under extreme conditions and at such huge expense in an utterly futile attempt to stop a natural process? Let’s hope that this year marks the last time firefighters are forced to pay the price and taxpayers foot the bill for futile suppression siege spectacles in Idaho’s Fire Country.

--Lookout Lex and the Fire Hobo

Where The Heck Is Yellowpine? - Part I

Photo Caption: This is the bumper sticker that is making the rounds of fire camps on the Cascade Complex Fire in Idaho.

Where The Heck Is Yellowpine?

"Where The Heck Is Yellowpine, and why am I risking my ass to save it?" For the past month, the several hundred people that I am working with have been asking this question.

As I write this, dozens of giant wildfires spread across wide swaths of the Northern Rockies. This is nothing out of the ordinary, of course - these forests rely on fire for regeneration and cleansing, and lightning has drilled dry Western forests regularly for thousands of years - everyone knows this.

But political cowardice drives a fire suppression policy that defies all measures of common sense.

For the gypsy crew of wildfire managers and FireWar Profiteers that we roll with, our 2007 fire carnival is a four ring circus set in Central Idaho - with each ring representing a huge fire. These landscape-scale burns are in an apparent race to consume the collection of cabins, mobile homes, and junker snowmobiles that comprise the 'historic' burg of Yellowpine. 'Historic' as in "something happened here once..."

Map of 4 fires threatening Yellowpine - active fire in red, completed line in black.
From: http://www.fs.fed.us/idahofires/news/closures/maps/0816/area-closures-0816.pdf

There is an outside chance that all four fires will converge upon the town in one tornadic afternoon: wings of flame sweeping together, clanging like giant anvils colliding, cleansing Yellowpine in yet another natural purge.

Everyone tasked with fighting these fires reaches three basic conclusions:

1. Once these big fires become established, no amount of firefighting will stop them 'until the snows fly'.
2. We are fighting these fires because some people live in these woods, and nobody wants to be the person who burned them out, and,
3. After 50 years of saving Yellowpine, we could have paid Big Sur land prices to buy out each and every hermit between Yellowstone and Oregon, and still come out ahead.

How might one column-driven fire steer another? Will one monster fire roasting an entire drainage in an afternoon create indraft winds which are strong enough to suck another huge fire - five miles away and across a canyon - into itself? If we set a backfire on one fire, will it suck or be sucked? These are the questions that fire managers must consider as they game-out tactics to steer landscape-scale fires. And that's what we are trying to do out here, to steer these monster fires away from a 'ranch' here, or a hillbilly commune there; just doing something, anything, to save the day.

The 'ranches' that we are protecting are a few dude ranches that wealthy outsiders can fly into for a weekend - a couple of horses and funky cabins grandfathered into National Forest land covered with thickets of lodgepole and fir (the natural cover here). The 'communities' are the Lower-48's equivalent of Fairbanks, Alaska - the end of the paved road, an oddball collection of heavy drinkers that have no use for society or government until their roads need plowing or a wildfire threatens.

Most of the characters that I met in Yellowpine look like they would be happy living in the 19th century. That's fine with me, but we should recall that the West of the 1800s had no organized wildland fire suppression, and that frontier towns burned to the ground on a fairly regular basis. As much as I would hate to deprive Yellowpine's residents of an authentic historic experience (wildfire burning their town), I am even less excited about putting wildland firefighters in there to chase spotfires through hazmat shacks, ammo caches, and tire fires as the big one rolls in. [for photos of Yellowpine, click here]

Now don't get me wrong: I have nothing against people living in the hills, being off-the-grid, or collecting a personal treasure-trove of 'might-come-in-handy-someday' car parts, old trucks, snowmachines, old barrels of acid, or junk lumber. The personal junkyard is a Western Institution, and I would be a hypocrite to advocate for its abolition; just don't expect me to put my ass between your junkpile and a running wildfire.

In the last several decades, great progress has been made in restoring fire to its natural role in the Great American Backwoods. Large expanses of roadless and wilderness land in remote areas of America's Interior West now have Fire Management Plans that designate large areas as "Fire Use" areas. Here, naturally-ignited fires burning may be allowed to fulfill their natural ecological role. Yet we allow one burg here, and a hamlet there to influence land management on the scale of millions of acres. In the case of Yellowpine, the hundreds of thousands of acres on the surrounding Payette and Boise National Forests that would benefit from a 'let-burn' policy are off limits to Fire Use, as natural fire represents a threat to the cabins, dude ranches, and bible camps scattered there.

Why are we risking our asses and squandering our fortunes on a few cabins in the sticks? We are here because America's politicians and land managers don't have the political backbone to ask:

"Who really gives a damn where Yellowpine is!"

--- Fire Hobo

NEXT POST - Fire burns our circus tents

Firebombs in the Forest: Untreated Slash Piles Fueled Angora Fire Destruction

The Angora Fire near Lake Tahoe destroyed hundreds of homes and other structures in the community of Meyers, California. There have been several post mortem analyses of the cause and effects of the wildfire disaster, yet there remains a grossly understated issue that has so far failed to generate the attention from journalists or policymakers it deserves: the presence of hundreds of unburned slash piles left over from thinning operations nearly three years ago that helped fuel the wildfire’s destructive power.


Photo Caption: The biggest cluster of destroyed homes was located next to the fuels reduction unit that had untreated slash piles left over from thinning operations completed nearly three years ago. The intense heat from the flaming slash piles lofted large burning embers that were carried by the wind and fell into the residential zone, igniting and destroying homes. Photo by FUSEE.
[For a larger image click here]

What is “Slash”?

“Slash” is the slang term for the needles, limbs, and small-diameter tree trunks left over from commercial logging or non-commercial thinning operations. As it dries out and cures in the sun, slash can be one of the most flammable fuels in the forest because it is easily ignited and burns intensely. So-called fuels reduction treatments that remove large-diameter tree trunks but leave the slash strewn across the ground are more aptly called fuels relocation rather than fuels “reduction” treatments, for they have merely relocated the fuel hazard from the tops of the trees where only the rarest and most extreme kinds of fire behavior—crownfire--can ignite them, down to the ground surface where they immediately become available fuel for the most common form of fire behavior: surface fire.

There are several methods agencies like the Forest Service use to “treat” slash. Some of the most popular methods like “compaction” (e.g. crushing the slash by running it over with bulldozers and log-skidding machines) and “lop and scatter” (e.g. cutting it up with chainsaws into smaller pieces and spreading it all over the forest floor) have been thoroughly discredited by fire scientists as increasing fire risks and fuel hazards, not decreasing them. Another popular method is to pile the slash either by handcrews or by machines. This decreases the horizontal continuity of fuel across the forest floor, but unless the slash piles are burned or otherwise physically removed, they can actually increase the rate of spread, intensity, and severity of a wildfire.

Anyone who has ever burned slash piles knows the kind of intense heat that is emitted—enough to burn the flesh of your face through radiant heat alone. Slash can burn for hours, and embers can smolder for days. Slash piles that are burned too close to standing trees can kill them through “cooking” the roots or “heat girdling” the trees, and ember-filled smoke columns can severely scorch or even ignite the canopy of overstory trees even if the flames from the slash piles do not come close to reaching the tree canopy.


Photo Caption: White ash-covered soil indicates extreme intensity and high severity. Black-topped stumps show that this stand had been thinned before the fire, but this did not prevent high fire severity. Blue paint on the largest remaining trees indicates this stand is a potential salvage timber sale. Photo by FUSEE.
[For a larger image click here]

Slash Caused Spotfires That Ignited Homes

This is precisely what happened on the Angora Fire: several hundred untreated slash piles ignited by the wildfire created such intense heat that it killed nearly all of the remaining overstory trees in the thinned units. In fact, according to the Forest Service’s analysis, the severity of the wildfire burning through the slashpiles matched the severity of nearby untreated stands, calling into question whether the thinning treatments was a complete waste of money and labor. Additionally, large burning embers were sent aloft from the slash piles and were transported by the wind into the nearby residential area where they ignited dozens of homes.

The biggest cluster of destroyed homes was located next to fuels reduction unit number 20 that had contained hundreds of untreated slash piles. The Forest Service claims that the thinning operations successfully reduced the amount of spotfires that occurred in the residential area because the reduction of trees reduced the number of tree crowns that could have sent aloft burning embers. However, the agency failed to acknowledge at all that the slash piles produced embers and spotfires.


Photo Caption: Each white dot is an ash mound that marks the spot where an untreated slash pile was left from thinning operations. There were hundreds of 10 x 10 foot slash piles spread approximately 20 feet apart in fuels reduction unit number 20 that were set ablaze by the Angora Fire. Photo by FUSEE.
[For a larger image click here]

Embers created by burning tree crowns can be picked up by the wind and carried relatively long distances. However, these embers also tend to be smaller in size, and therefore, have a shorter “residence time” (i.e. the time they are combusting before they burn out). If the ember burns out before it reaches the ground, it falls as ash and cannot ignite a spotfire.

Embers produced by slash piles generally have less chance to be picked up by winds because they start off at the ground surface, however, this does not apply during high wind speeds, and fuels reduction units that have excessively thinned trees enable high winds to blow right through to the ground surface. The intense and prolonged heat output from a burning slash pile can produce a convective column of hot air and smoke that can readily send embers high aloft. Additionally, embers produced by slash piles tend to have larger particle size with a much longer residence time, thereby increasing the probability that a burning ember can reach the ground and ignite a spotfire.

This appears to be exactly what happened when the winds shifted and pushed the Angora Fire into the residential neighborhood in Meyers. The intense heat and ember wash from hundreds of well-cured slash piles ignited homes located downwind, and killed all the trees in the thinned units. The Forest Service determined that the fire severity was identical between the treated stand full of slash in Unit 20 and adjacent untreated stands that had not been thinned.


Photo Caption: Another view shows the size of Unit 20 and the scale of untreated slash piles that sent the wildfire spotting into the tree-covered residential zone where the large white spots reveal the sites of completely destroyed homes. Photo by FUSEE.
[For a larger image click here]

Thinning Without Treating Slash is Not a "Completed Fuels Reduction Treatment”

The Forest Service has some legitimate reasons why it failed to effectively treat the slash in fuels reduction units burned by the Angora Fire, namely, the opposition by air quality regulators and local residents to the smoke that would be produced by slash burning. However, in its report on the effects of fuels treatments, the agency made an illegitimate excuse that claimed the piles were left untreated because they needed a minimum of one to two years to dry out prior to burning. This is simply not true—slash piles can be ready for burning in just a couple months after cutting, especially in the warm-dry climate around Lake Tahoe. And even a “green” pile of slash can burn if you pour enough burning fuel from your driptorch on it!

[September 25, 2007 Update: In response to the statement above, Forest Service managers have disclosed that the slashpiles contained larger logs that required one to two years to cure before burning. This would be a legitimate excuse for delaying up to two years to burn the piles, however, it has yet to be explained why these piles remained unburned after that two year curing time had passed. A September 5, 2007 story in the local newspaper, the Tahoe Bonanza, revealed that over 3,000 acres within the Tahoe basin have untreated slashpiles from past thinning projects, and local residents are concerned about the fire hazard presented by these piles. To the best of our knowledge, the Forest Service has not publicly disclosed a timetable for treating these unburned slashpiles.]

In reporting its accomplishments to Congress, the Forest Service regularly counts as “fuels reduction completed” the number of acres where it has thinned trees, and then can count these same acres again as accomplishments in fuels reduction if and when it later treats the slash created by thinning operations. Thus, for example, the agency claims a total of 80 acres of fuels reduction completed when it thins trees and later burns the slash on a 40 acre unit. In any other accounting system, this would be rightfully condemned as “double dipping” to cook the books. No fuels reduction treatment or forest restoration project should be considered properly “completed” unless and until it has BOTH effectively reduced the slash fuel AND completed understory broadcast prescribed burning to deal with remaining surface fuels.

The presence of unburned slash piles, their role in spreading the Angora Fire, and their location next to the biggest cluster of destroyed homes is worthy of more thorough examination by the press, but what is even more critical is for policymakers to deal with the wider, generalized issue of unburned slash piles—because thousands of slash piles are currently littering the forest floor throughout the Lake Tahoe Basin and hundreds of others areas across the West where logging and thinning operations have occurred.

From the evidence on the ground it is clear that in the Lake Tahoe Basin the pace of tree thinning is far outracing the ability of land management agencies to effectively deal with the slash left behind. The slash piles are so numerous around Lake Tahoe communities that in some areas there is barely any horizontal separation between piles. Slash piles are located right next to busy highways were a single carelessly discarded cigarette butt could set them ablaze. In many cases, piles are located dangerously close to remaining trees such that if and when the piles are burned by managers or by wildfire, they will likely damage or kill the trees. Thinning units littered with slash piles offer as much fire hazard reduction as covering up oil spills with a bunch of rags.

The Angora Fire offers a wake up call: untreated slash piles function like “firebombs” in the forest, increasing the spread, intensity, and severity of wildfires, and can be a major agent of home ignitions. The number, location, and extent of unburned slash piles scattered throughout the Lake Tahoe Basin and elsewhere across the West constitutes a real and present danger to residents living near similar so-called “fuels reduction” units.

--FUSEE Staff